Matthew M. Aid - Intel Wars: The Secret History of the Fight Against Terror

The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency

A 2008 U.S. Army map of Afghanistans political divisions.

The view from a gun position at Firebase Phoenix overlooking the Korengal Valley on July 10, 2007. (Courtesy of Department of the Army.)

Corporal Scott Harvey, a cryptologic linguist with Operational Command Element 2, 2nd Radio Battalion, Task Force Belleau Wood, uses a radio scanner to listen to Taliban radio activity in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, May 2011. (Courtesy of United States Marine Corps.)

U.S. Marine Corps Lance Corporal Samuel Kautz, with Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, launches a RQ-11B Raven unmanned drone at Combat Outpost Viking, Iraq, June 2, 2009. (Photo by Corporal Robert S. Morgan, courtesy of United States Marine Corps.)

Air Force ordnance personnel load a Hellfire missile on an MQ-9 Reaper unmanned drone in April 2010. (Courtesy of United States Air Force.)

U.S. Air Force personnel with the 380th Expeditionary Aircraft Maintenance Squadron conduct preflight services on an RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned drone at Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates, February 12, 2010. (Photo by Master Sergeant Scott T. Sturkol, courtesy of United States Air Force.)

Sergeant Marcel Ruales, with the U.S. Armys 636th Military Intelligence Battalion, and assigned to the Human Intelligence Collection Team, Forward Operating Base Ghazni, Afghanistan, shakes hands with children in the Afghan village of Warghez on September 17, 2009. (Photo by Master Sergeant Sarah R. Webb, courtesy of United States Air Force.)

U.S. Army RC-12X Guardrail SIGINT aircraft flying an operational intelligence collection mission over Afghanistan. (Courtesy of United States Army.)

Former director of national intelligence Dennis Blair. (Courtesy of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.)

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, director of the CIA from 2009 to 2011, and White House chief of staff under President Bill Clinton from 1994 to 1997. (Photo by Monica King, courtesy of Department of Defense.)

National Security Agency director Lieutenant General Keith B. Alexander being briefed on SIGINT operations in Afghanistan by Rear Admiral Paul Becker, director of intelligence of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Joint Command, in July 2010. Note that the map on the wall has been censored. (Courtesy of ISAF Media Relations Office.)

President Barack Obama and senior staff attend a briefing in the White House Situation Room. (Courtesy of the White House.)

Stills from a Taliban propaganda video aired on the Al-Emera network showing insurgents en route to an attack on a United States Army outpost in Nuristan Province in 2009, as well as an arsenal of RPGs. The title card reads Foreign Press Center of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

A U.S. Air Force MQ-1B Predator unmanned drone taxis down the runway on October 13, 2008, at Ali Air Base, Iraq. (Photo by Senior Airman Christopher Griffin, courtesy of United States Air Force.)

The tracking device that college student Yasir Afifi found mounted on the undercarriage of his car in October 2010, later reclaimed by FBI agents. (Photo courtesy of Flickr user floorsixtyfour, used under a Creative Commons license.)

Copyright 2012 by Matthew M. Aid

Electronic edition published in January 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

For information address Bloomsbury Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

Published by Bloomsbury Press, New York

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Aid, Matthew M., 1958

Intel wars : the secret history of the fight against terror / Matthew M. Aid.1st U.S. ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-60819-499-5 (ebook)

1. TerrorismPreventionGovernment policyUnited StatesHistory. 2. Intelligence serviceUnited StatesHistory. I. Title.

HV6432.4.A36 2012

363.325'1630973dc23

2011023840

To my family:

Harry, Rita, and Jonathan.

This book would not have been possible without them.

Im so cocky I could swagger,

Things I know would make you stagger,

Im ten percent cloak and ninety percent dagger.

Boo Boo Baby Im a spy.

ANONYMOUS OFFICE OF STRATEGIC SERVICES (OSS) OFFICER

Contents

The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fearfear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable.

H. L. MENCKEN

After more than eight years spent looking for Osama bin Laden, the CIA finally got their first break in the hunt for the al Qaeda leader in August 2010, when Pakistani agents working for the CIA followed an al Qaeda courier from an Internet caf in the city of Peshawar to an isolated compound just north of the city of Abbottabad, thirty-one miles northeast of the Pakistani capital of Islamabad.